Holiday Retail Onboarding 6 Tips to Help Employees Flourish
An eBook by
Onboarding Employees
Introduction Last year’s holiday shopping season brought in an estimated $579.5 billion dollars for retail. Here’s the breakdown of where holiday shoppers were spending their dollars: •
Black Friday sales were around $59 billion dollars.
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The 10 days before Christmas saw sales close to $147 billion dollars.
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As for online sales - thanks in part to popular days like Cyber Monday, Green Monday and Free Shipping Day - total sales amounted to $42.3 billion.
As you can see, the holiday shopping window is a boon, and accounts for 40% of a store’s annual sales. That’s almost half a stores annual sales! This coming holiday season won’t be any different. That’s why retailers look to hire seasonal employees to help with the additional shopping demands. 800-566-3159
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Onboarding Employees
Amazon has already hired 70,000 seasonal employees for the 2013 season – a sizable amount, considering they already have close to 90,000 employees. Macy’s expects to bring in 83,000 seasonal employees. Wal-Mart’s hiring 55,000 seasonal employees. Suffice it to say, retailers have hired – and will continue to hire – plenty of help this holiday.
Thus, retailers need a quick and efficient onboarding program to get seasonal employees up to speed on everything from company policies to a clear understanding of what their job entails.
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Here are 6 tips to make retail onboarding easier.
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Onboarding Employees
Problem #1: Orientation Overload We always translate orientations into the image of getting a drink of water from a fire hose. Typically, new employee orientations consist of: • • •
Learning about the history of the company Reviewing the company handbook, policies and procedures Filling out new hire paperwork, W2, benefits forms, etc.
Needless to say, that’s a lot to digest.
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Onboarding Employees
Solution Modify the orientation process. Make it easier for every new hire to get acclimated with paperwork and more. Here are a few tips to help you along the way. •
Skip the company overview – do seasonal employees need to know this?
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Send the paperwork to their homes and have them fill it out before they arrive to the orientation.
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Give a brief tour of where they’ll be assigned, where the break rooms/bathrooms are, emergency exits and other vital landmarks. Again, keep it brief.
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Give itinerary that lays out what their job demands are in a quick video.
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Onboarding Employees
Problem #2: Confusion With Company Policies You’ve seen it happen while you’re standing in line waiting to pay. All of a sudden the person at the register turns on their “distress” light signal for the manager’s assistance. Everyone in line hangs their heads and lets out heavy sighs because now their wait is going to be even longer. There are a number of reasons this happens. It could be an item is priced differently than in the Black Friday ad. Maybe it’s the result of a customer trying to use a coupon that’s not valid. Perhaps the cashier cannot remember how to apply the discount code that she was shown two weeks ago. If you’re lucky, the cashier acknowledges your wait with a sincere and sympathetic “Sorry for the wait”, but other times it just goes unnoticed. New hires need to be educated on company regulations, but with so many seasonal workers being brought in, you need a faster way to deliver that.
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Onboarding Employees
Solution With ej4’s knowledge sharing platform, Thinkzoom, not only can you make your own custom video on company policies, but you can deliver off-the-shelf content on courses such as anti-harassment, workplace discrimination, workplace safety and other key compliance themes. If you’re delivering any of our off-the-shelf content, you have the ability to add your face, your voice and your message before and after a course. And if the majority of your seasonal staff have smartphones or tablets on hand, all the better for them to access these mobile-friendly courses whenever, wherever.
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Onboarding Employees
Problem #3: Uncertainty About Job If seasonal workers aren’t given a clear understanding as to what they’re doing, how can you expect them to be as productive as you need them to be? Let’s say you hire additional employees to handle customer support calls. They aren’t sure who to connect certain calls with. They provide false information, lead customers to the wrong extensions, or do something much worse… like vent their frustration with a customer on social media. Now instead of turning typical complaints into opportunities, they could be exacerbating the situation and YOU could be losing customers as a result. You must clarify job expectations and make sure managers are helping to coach every seasonal employee on how to handle their duties.
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Onboarding Employees
Solution Right off the bat, why not create a custom eLearning course covering the types of calls they’ll be handling? In the video, cover which department they're responsible for (technical, billing, membership, etc.), and what opening questions to ask. Then after that, move into discussing conversational training tips on things like: •
Preparing for tough conversations – telling a customer “NO”.
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Staying calm with angry consumers.
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Empathizing with consumers.
Create quick, to-the-point courses that every seasonal employee can learn from and apply to their day-to-day responsibilities faster and more efficiently.
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Onboarding Employees
Problem #4: Dealing With Stress On days like Black Friday right up to the final minutes before Christmas, there will be plenty of instances when things get hectic - and no matter what your employees need to remain calm and collected.
Don’t let the stress and pressure get to them - give new hires the tools to learn to control the stress created by long lines, impatient customers or just having to multitask too much.
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Onboarding Employees
Solution Issue a short course on Stress Management. Your seasonal employees are just like the rest of us, trying to prepare for holidays in addition to working with the “Scrooges” of the public. Maybe you create a custom course on ways to deal with holiday stressors that apply directly to your employees? For example, what if the computers go down and you have to revert back to oldschool credit card swipe machines?
That computer glitch inevitably means longer lines, more steps, and more frustrated customers. Lessen the stress with pointers on how to handle customer complaints, how to deflect customer frustration and make employees realize that some anger is simply circumstantial, and not always directed straight at the employee.
You need to keep your employees’ spirits high and motivated. Speaking of which…
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Onboarding Employees
Problem #5: Keeping Them Motivated An unmotivated retail employee can be bad news for your store.
Whether it’s the constant stress from having to diffuse customer issues every day, or because their manager’s not giving enough direction and feedback on their performance – employees can easily lose interest. Then their performance drops. And because the shopping season is so chaotic, your company may not notice the ebbs and flows of your staff’s overall motivation.
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Onboarding Employees
Solution The first answer to that problem is simple recognition and encouragement from management; the other option (or just combine both) is providing some way to give back. Let me ask a two-part question: Can you insert contests and incentives into the onboarding process? Of course! Even if most holiday hires are part-time and will most likely be gone after three months? Again, Yes! If you’re recognizing your regular, full-time staff with holiday bonuses, you should consider some type of reward system for seasonal employees, too. Any system where you can help promote higher levels of productivity from your team, right?
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Onboarding Employees
Consider a reward for the top seller of each department (or the entire store). If you have some type of consumer feedback process, be it a comment card, or an online survey asking about how service was, put a reward for the employee who finishes with top honors.
As for the rewards… well, that’s entirely up to you. Gift cards, cash bonuses, shopping sprees, time off (which could be leaving a shift early for the night or coming in late the next morning), vacation – whatever you choose, make it fun. Make it worthwhile. Show that you appreciate every single employee who’s signed on to help bring as much business for your store as possible.
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Onboarding Employees
Problem #6: Losing Great Seasonal Employees It’s true that a majority of seasonal employees won’t be around after the holiday shopping season, but what about the great seasonal employee that’s outperformed and helped bring in a high volume of sales? What’s to keep him or her from becoming an asset to your company down the line? Yes, you already have full-time employees, but what happens if you expand to another store a few miles from this one? Or what if you plan to expand the current store with other departments? In either case, you’ll need extra bodies. Why invest more dollars and time in new hires when you have seasonal workers with experience already?
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Onboarding Employees
Solution Give seasonal workers the training and support to help enhance their customer service skills. How would you help new salespeople with negotiations? While a course on “Dealing With Tough Customers” can apply to nearly every position in retail, an off-the-shelf course on “No, But, If” gives your salespeople three quick steps to use with consumers who seem likely to buy, but want to haggle either price or other attachments. For instance, some customers want to buy the latest tablet, but might not show their cards too early. They hold back to see if there’s any way they can get an extended warranty through the store if they buy it. You train the new salesperson to say “Not at the moment, but…” and hint at how, if the consumer considers buying a protective case and screen shield, that maybe they could ask management about extending the warranty.
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Onboarding Employees
Now granted, that’s not to say company policies will always bend that way, but if they do, a “No, But, If” course gives new salespeople an easy way to engage consumers who tend to sit on purchasing more than others.
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Onboarding Employees
Or give your new salesperson a quick crash course on negotiation skills with custom-created courses on tips your company wants every employee to feed off of. Is there a certain negotiation tactic that you want every employee to use? Record it and share it with every seasonal employee and give your new salespeople a bigger edge.
That’s just a small sample size of skills to teach your seasonal workers this holiday. The important thing is you at least provide that option. Because again, these employees are only with your retailer for a very short window – you need to gain every bit of productivity and potential from them as possible. Who knows, you might need top performers soon enough.
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Onboarding Employees
Conclusion Simply placing seasonal employees in their roles, giving them a few quick words of advice and moving on to the next task won’t cut it. You need to engage your new hires this holiday as quickly as possible. You need to prepare them to not only help sell your products better, but sell as much as possible. That requires a quick and effective onboarding process that not only gets them working faster, but smarter.
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See how ej4’s quick and easy eLearning courses give your seasonal hires the skills to succeed this holiday.
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